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Yawarra - Tiny, shiny cool stuff

You often come across products that sound too good to be true. And they usually are! But in the case of the fit-PC2 from Yawarra Information Appliances, it is quite likely that you will scratch your head and wonder, “How do they do it?” Imagine a PC with all the power and functionality that you are used to in a box that takes up half your desk, now available in something that literally fits in the palm of your hand.

Forward thinking

When husband and wife team Paul McGowan and Nikki Stokes decided to start Yawarra, they went through NEIS (New Enterprise Incentive Scheme) which provided small business training, advice and mentoring as well as income support for 12 months. “We decided that it was not what we sold but how we did it that was important”. With backgrounds in engineering and science, together with Paul’s interest in computing and electronics and Nikki’s passion for finding a better way to do things, newly emerging small footprint computers were the natural choice.

The business started in their home, moved to the garage and now employs six staff in an office/warehouse in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. After the first attempt at employing staff using the traditional approach flopped they thought laterally and found a fabulous workforce of local mums who all live on the same block. With pre-school children of her own Nikki says, “We always said there had to be this untapped resource of mums with valuable skills who were overlooked by many employers because they didn’t want to work 9 till 5.”

Small and impressive

If you thought that computers couldn’t get any smaller, think again. The fit-PC2 is the latest in Yawarra’s range of Information Appliances; computers that do one thing and do it well and invisibly. With a range of brilliantly designed and manufactured products that, by their own admission, “really appeal to the geek market”, the fit-PC2 brings a product to mainstream computer users that replaces the traditional noisy, dusty, bulky, energy hungry PC. With specs that match leading PC products and pre-loaded with Windows 7, the Israeli designed and manufactured fit-PC2 is unbelievably small and efficient and does things that we tend to associate with physically larger products.

A visit to www.yawarra.com.au will also reveal the huge range of Information Appliances, or as they prefer to call it, “tiny shiny cool stuff” that will fit a myriad of specialised computing requirements.

Minimising impact

Yawarra are very proud that their computers use a tiny amount of power to run, about 10 W for the fit-PC2, compared to 60-100W for a typical desktop PC. And to offset the carbon emissions of their computers, they plant four trees through the Greenfleet programme (www.greenfleet.com.au) for every computer sold. Their commitment to minimise the environmental impact of their products and their business is tangible. It extends to:

using recyclable packaging and asking the same of their suppliers

buying accredited 100% wind power from their electricity supplier

reducing business energy consumption through a variety of power-efficient technologies and appliances and

offering e-waste recycling of their products to customers.

And just to show that they are serious about their environmental impact, they have three bins under every desk in their premises. One for recycling material, one for non-recycling landfill and another for organic materials that they collect and toss into the compost bin.

Saward Dawson and Yawarra

Saward Dawson has assisted Yawarra with various matters including preparation of its annual compliance work, preparation of finance applications, updating cash flow projections and reviewing its business plan. It has been exciting to help a young and dynamic business with a product that has plenty of potential, during its formative stages. Nikki says, “We found Saward Dawson on the internet. They sounded progressive and able to do what we needed. It has been a pleasure dealing with their team.”

Whilst computers are constantly getting faster and more powerful, the average desktop PC is still pretty much the same shape and size as it was in the mid 1980s. It might be more powerful, being able to do more for the energy it consumes, but it is still just as energy-hungry. But Yawarra are happy to demonstrate how their products, “can save businesses hundreds of dollars per computer each year in replacement and running costs. For a business with hundreds of computers, that can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of a computer” says Paul McGowan.

If you are in the market for new computer hardware, the fit-PC2 is well worth investigating at www.yawarra.com.au.